Sex education teachers must present abstinence as the preferred behavior for unmarried people under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Jim Doyle. The legislation means teachers must emphasize that refraining from sex before marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
I’m waiting for the bill that requires education on sexual ethics including what is and is not legal sexual behavior. The closest I ever came to that type of talk was during a greek mythology class when the teacher let the discussion between students stray into who can have sex, when and with whom. Most boys believed they were under no obligation to wait, but their bride should be a virgin on their wedding night. One boy delighted in mocking that double standard.
Before that all I got was a gym teacher in junior high school breaking the rules to explain what the sex organs were and how they functioned.
Too often the traditional abstinence message turns teen sexuality into a hockey game where the girl is the goalie who is told she must protect her goal (virginity) at all times. The boys meanwhile are encouraged, either explicitly or implicitly, to try to get past the girl’s defenses.
If you buy into that analogy, it makes perfect sense to ask, “What was she wearing?” and to blame the girl for failing to stop a boy from scoring. It also makes many acquaintance rapes just part of the game because the girl or woman let her defenses down. Rape charges are then like a bad call from a ref who wasn’t anywhere near the game you were playing.
But healthy sexuality is not a competitive sport where you must have winners and losers.
Also posted on my blog, http://abyss2hope.blogspot.com
Pingback: Wonderland or Not
Pingback: Wonderland or Not
Pingback: Allison Lonsdale
Pingback: reality buzz toy r us at realitybuzz.org
Pingback: feminist blogs
Pingback: FeministBlogosphere
You make a good point here. Throughout all my years in public school, I never once was told that no means no, or for that matter anything about rape. It seems like the only thing legislators, and in many cases educators, are interested in teaching in a sex ed. class is how sex of any kind is bad. Fortunately, I have good parents and know that rape is a bad thing, and for the most part most males know this, but it seems like any comprehensive sex ed. class should cover this topic exhaustively. Perhaps only dealing with teen pregnancy is society’s easy way out of dealing with the bigger problem.
This bill sounds sensible to me. So does your desire to see “the bill that requires education on sexual ethics including what is and is not legal sexual behavior.”
We could do with a lot more sexual ethics.
I suppose I agree that abstinence is the preferred alternative for unmarried teenaged people, but teenaged people being the way they are, you probably couldn’t sell it quite like that.
But it’s dishonest. Sex is pleasurable and not sinful and it’s much better that unmarried people enage in responsible sex rather than irresponsible marriage. This is the story of my own life, my husband’s, almost anyone else I know well, and I would venture that of very many if not most other people born after 1955. Decoupling (ugh) marriage from sex in this way is not a compromise of the value of marriage, which is about more than sex (if you think otherwise you haven’t been married).
Someone please ask the Wisconsin Gov if he was a virgin on his wedding night. Someone please out him if he wasn’t. Or perhaps revive Al Franken’s famous abstinence letter.
I doubt if this was the governor’s brainchild. He is much more liberal than the legislature that sent him this tripe. He has vetoed measures that would have restricted abortion in various ways.
it’s much better that unmarried people enage in responsible sex than irresponsible marriage
Well, I agree that irresponsible marriage is problematic.
However, for many people (me included), unmarried sex is inherently irresponsible sex. If your vision of sexuality is uninformed by religious belief or speculation as to the purpose of sexual love, well, perhaps that’s OK for you – but that isn’t what most of us feel. It certainly isn’t something we will accept as the content of what our children are taught by society.
Within that purposive vision, sex cannot be decoupled from emotional and spiritual coupling, i.e. marriage. The mechanics of sexual acts are simply the surface – page one of the encyclopedia. Without a bona fide commitment to the physical, moral, spiritual and mental well-being of one’s partner, sexual contact is intrinsically irresponsible.
It’s possible for that commitment to exist without formal marriage, but such a bond (whether formalized or not) is the sine qua non of what “responsibility” means in a sexual context, for what I believe to be a majority of Americans. That we so often fail to live this truth does not detract from the truth’s existence.
Throughout all my years in public school, I never once was told that no means no,
In fact, someone must have told you, or implied to you, that no meant yes, because otherwise why would you even question that no meant no? If, for example, you asked your parents if you could borrow the family car and they said no, would you expect to be able to take it anyway on the assumption that they really meant yes?
Robert, then feel free not to have sex outside of marriage.
…abstinence is the preferred alternative for unmarried teenaged people…
But the bill requires teachers to claim that abstinence is the perferred alternative for unmarried people of any age. Since gay marriage is illegal in Wisconsin, I suppose that that means that gays are supposed to be celibate forever. As are straights who find marriage uncomfortably too much an ownership relationship to engage in it, those who haven’t found the right person, etc.
Actually, I think that abstinence is probably not the best thing for most teenagers–at least not most older teenagers. Teenagers need to learn about their bodies and what they are and aren’t comfortable with somehow and I think it is much preferrable that they learn that in the relatively safe setting of non-marital sex before they undertake riskier behavior, such as marriage. Besides which, teenage sex is as old as the species and it’s not going to go away just because we tell kids not to do it. Modern humans mature sexually before they are really ready to take on full adult responsibilites. It would be better to acknowledge this, teach them how to behave responsibly, and let them experiment in relative safety instead of forbidding all experiments except the most dangerous one.
Robert, then feel free not to have sex outside of marriage.
Thanks, I will!
I will also feel free to work towards a society that reflects what I believe to be the correct moral values and choices. And that includes ensuring that children understand that sexuality is a powerful force in human life – and one which must be handled responsibly.
Yes, but Robert, you haven’t!
It is much easier to be anti-premarital sex once you’re married.
I spent most of the first 16 years of my life playing defense. It’s exhausting.
It is much easier to be anti-premarital sex once you’re married.
No, it’s much easier to live up to it once you’re married. Holding the philosophical position is pretty much cost-free, if you’re unbothered by the ridicule of liberals. ;P
As I noted, lots of us – and definitely me included – don’t slash didn’t successfully apply the beliefs we hold dear. That doesn’t seem to me to have much bearing on whether those beliefs are right or reasonable or not.
Wow. I lived in Wisconsin and voted for Governor Doyle. I’m deeply disappointed in his obvious pandering to conservatives. I just checked the official web-site for the governor and the announcement was buried in a press release titled “Governor Doyle Signs 12 Bills into Law”. I wonder how many Wisconsonites are even aware of this bill. My usually politically savvy friends haven’t mentione it at all.
I was just making the point that rape was never formally addressed at school, which is a problem, especially if you follow Robert’s logic that we should at least try to project values onto children.
Most of us? Says who? Just which unbiased, responsibly-conducted study are you basing that conclusion on?
Moreover,
Failure-rates may not pertain to a policy’s moral “rightness” as you judge it, but they definitely bear on a policy’s reasonableness, especially when the policy is question is sex-education and the potential consequences are teen pregnancy and std’s.
Beliefs about saving one’s self for marriage are directly related to religious tenets about the same, religious tenets that I, a somewhat religious person, nonetheless find to be ridiculous for lots of reasons. I don’t think that you, Robert, have the right to insist that my children adopt your view of sexual responsibility through public school instruction.
I do not believe that this is merely a question of how many of us have failed to live up to our ideals. I don’t think remaining celibate outside of marriage truly reflects widespread societal ideals anymore. People don’t act like it, it doesn’t stop them from having healthy marriages or family life and most don’t make a big deal out of their children’s premarital relationships. That’s why this bill is dishonest. It is pretending that the world is other than we know it to be in order to pander to the minority who wish we would go back to living as if we were still wandering around the middle eastern desert.
Yes, of course this whole message is intended as a backdoor slap at gays and gay marriage, as well as at women who have children out of wedlock at any age, and on and on.
Dianne, I noted the fact that the bill doesn’t limit itself to teenagers. I was being snarky.
The only 100% effective way to keep your child from drowning is to insure that she never goes swimming. Taeching her water safety and how to swim will just encourage her to engage in risky behavior by getting in water.
The only 100% effective way to keep your child from beimg killed or injured in a car accident is to insure that she never gets in a motor vehicle.
Teaching her traffic safetywill just encourage her to drive and expose her to the risk of accidents.
Sex is like swimming and driving. Don’t do it; it’s not safe.
Throughout all my years in public school, I never once was told that no means no, or for that matter anything about rape. It seems like the only thing legislators, and in many cases educators, are interested in teaching in a sex ed. class is how sex of any kind is bad. Fortunately, I have good parents and know that rape is a bad thing,
But that’s the whole point. It’s one thing for the schools to teach biological facts. But is it the schools’ function to teach ethics, or is it that of the parents, like yours?
Sex is pleasurable and not sinful
Sex is not context-free, and there’s no way that I could agree with that statement without context. There’s plenty of sexual acts (rape is one) that are sinful. For that matter, there are plenty of sexual acts that are not pleasurable, at least not for all of the participants. IMNSHO, sex that can lead to conception where the two individuals involved have no preparation for or acceptance of the consequences is likely sinful as well.
and it’s much better that unmarried people enage in responsible sex rather than irresponsible marriage.
Why are these the only two alternatives?
I spent most of the first 16 years of my life playing defense. It’s exhausting.
Um, sarahlynn, for this to be literally true, you would have defended yourself against your first sexual pass at age 7. Is that what you’re saying?
I don’t think that you, Robert, have the right to insist that my children adopt your view of sexual responsibility through public school instruction.
I have the same right that you have. If you can propagandize for your position in the public schools, then I can propagandize for mine.
Robert:
Maybe not, but it does have a bearing on the assumption that taking the position that abstinence is good, and any sexual activity outside of marriage is bad, will be all that’s needed to protect children from STDs, unwanted pregnancy, rape, etc.
If a program isn’t effective at helping children and teens who clearly want to say no to sex, why waste taxpayers money on Just Say No campaigns?
It’s like telling children at the beach not to swim because they might drown but refusing to teach them what to do if they get caught in a rip tide because that would be condoning swimming. And further refusing to teach them how to recognize signs of a rip tide or dangerously fast water.
Another aspect of sex education should be helping children who have been sexually abused/sexually assaulted realize that what has been done to them is wrong and that help is available to them.
I don’t think that you, Robert, have the right to insist that my children adopt your view of sexual responsibility through public school instruction.
Is your objection that the schools are hereby required to teach sexual ethics? Or is it that they are required to teach sexual ethics that you don’t approve of? Because if it’s the latter, then he has just as much right to try to get the schools to teach sexual ethics that he approves of as you do.
The problem with sex ed is that it’s very hard to teach it in a values-neutral fashion. Even if you stick strictly to biological facts, questions arise. There’s no way to separate the physical impact of sex from the emotional impact in humans.
Is your objection that the schools are hereby required to teach sexual ethics?
Sex education is not equivalent to teaching sexual ethics. That’s a specious argument.
And Robert, I’m still waiting for facts to support your statement that the way “most of us feel” about sexuality is informed by religious belief.
Strangely I substantially agree with Robert’s view on sex. That is that sex must be combined with a deeper emotional bond/commitment for it to be good. For me. Unlike Robert, I understand that most people do not feel the same way that I do. Unlike Robert, I have never had sex with somebody with whom I did not have a deep emotional bond. In fact, I’ve never had sex with somebody that I did not eventually marry.
But none of that means that I believe that what is right for me, vis-a-vis sex, is right for everybody or even a large majority of everybody. Even with views on sex that are similar to those of Robert, I believe that the best sex education informs people of the dangers of unprotected sex, the various forms of contraception, etc., etc., etc. Especially given that abstinence only programs, much like DARE, have been proven to be an enormous failure.
RonF:
So schools shouldn’t teach that physcial violence and bullying are unethical? The reality is that one student’s ethical violations can impact many other students’ safety. If schools don’t have the right to teach ethics, they certainly don’t have the right to teach morals such as abstinence until marriage.
Thank you, Jake. Very well stated.
I would point out that what the law says is that abstinence should be reinforced as the best method, which for teenagers, it is. It does NOT say that abstinence is the only method that will be taught. I went through a similar Indiana program which started with “Abstinence is the ONLY WAY to be absolutely certain you won’t get pregnant or an STD. That having been said, here’s the chart on all the available methods…”
It’s actually an improvement over previous abstinence-only ed, which is a miserable frackin’ failure.
And Robert, I’m still waiting for facts to support your statement that the way “most of us feel” about sexuality is informed by religious belief.
The way that most of us think about EVERYTHING is informed by religious belief. It would be difficult to conceive how my formulation is not the case, given the polling data. For example:
77% of American adults believe that the Bible is either the inspired word of God, or literal word-for-word truth.
82% of American adults believe in God.
85% of American adults say that religion is a somewhat, very or extremely important part of their daily life. (I suppose the three percent are community-minded atheists.)
Polls listed are recent Gallup or CBS News polls, cited here.
It’s hard to imagine how the ~80% of American adults who profess substantial religious belief would carve out an exception for human sexuality. “I believe that God/my faith wants me to do X,Y,Z…except for sex, where it’s anything goes!” Doesn’t fly with me; YMMV.
I couldn’t find any specific poll asking “does your religion influence your beliefs concerning sex”. I suspect that this is for the same reason that I couldn’t find any specific polls asking whether the sky was blue.
Wow!!! Being a former Cheese, which means being a forever Cheese, I am amazed at the anguish if not anger this bill’s signing has brought out in us. RobertWrites leans towards the “I like it the way I think it should be and I think everyone should think that way too” I am also seeing the expression of “ignorance is bliss”. We wear seat belts, and most express to our children to wear them, not for moral superiority reasons, but we know there is a chance of an accident and they can prevent injury. Obviously not driving would be the safest, but of course we are going to drive, and we don’t teach in drive education to take a bike or walk , so you do it as safe as possible. Is it not as obvious as with the driving example that no sex is the safest? No driving is the safest? But if you are going to… That is what this is about. BobWrites, jump on out of the saddle and come talk with us. I bet you are just a heck of a guy!!!
Robert,
Your original statement was:
Which is not supported by citing statistics about the percentage of Americans who believe in God, the Bible or who say that religion is important in their lives. It doesn’t automatically follow that because a person believes in God, he or she believes unmarried sex is irresponsible sex. Likewise for the other stats. It’s an unsupported leap in logic.
The referent for “That isn’t what most of us feel” is “if your vision of sexuality is uninformed by religious belief”.
Ok. Thanks for clearing that up.
robert says:
but when it comes to teaching teenagers (i’ve done it for a living for 12 years now) it absolutely does have a bearing on their perception of whether it’s right or reasonable. teenagers (in my experience) take their cues from how the adults around them behave, not from what they say. you might have to point out your behavior in words before they notice, but it’s the behavior that sinks in. espousing a policy for them that you were unable to adhere to is (for a teenager) inherently unreasonable and hypocritical.
my goal is to lead by example every day, every second i’m in the presence of my students. if i can’t live up to one of my own policies (adjust for the difference in ages and responsibilities, of course), i am just a bully if i impose those policies on them.
if you want to teach abstinence before marriage, you’d better give them strategies (for resisting the urge) that provably work, and if you had premarital sex, they will immediately recognize your strategies as insufficient and ignore your entire message.
i think this whole matter could be settled with a public poll. lets just ask every married adult man if he had premarital sex. and we’ll let the results be our guide.
Read. This change your views on teenagers sex lives.
I’m 17, and am having no trouble being abstinent. I do not see why the other teenagers do have that problem. I see no legitimate excuses for having sex at this age.
My general philosophy is that if you can’t wait, don’t tempt yourself. If you can’t control yourself, you are not having sex for the sake of love, but of personal pleasure. I’m having no trouble waiting… and waiting… and waiting. I think this means that I can wait some more, and eventually… I will lose my virginity, when I’m old… and married.
Overview: read the article, no excuses for not being an abstinent teenager.
I think most of us would rather have accurate information out there, and then let teens let their consciences be their guide. If they really believe that having sex before marriage is all that bad, they won’t have any no matter what we say about condoms, and the rest of the teens will protect themselves.
Laying out the reality of rape law isn’t pushing an agenda because a pro-law agenda. Everyone benefits from knowing the law- and the law, while perhaps insufficiently applied in this regard, tends to encompass a pretty thorough set of non-consent scenarios.
My high school had a mandatory date rape prevention class, and while it felt boring and embarrassing, as all health classes do, I was really happy that the boys were getting it rapped into their heads that anything besides “yes” means “no.” The hockey analogy is apt and the situation is describes is obnoxious to me.
Anonymous Viewer, I commend you for making the choice that is best for you.
I made a different choice when I was 17, and I`m glad Planned Parenthood was there for me.
Now, several decades later, I would have no problem with my own kids being taught that “refraining from sex is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases” — as long as they leave out that silly “before marriage” part. I don`t want my kids to get any notion that a marriage license offers more protection than contraception does.
Someone wrote that he or she was never taught that no means no, or anything about rape. Dianne challenged that idea, saying,
>In fact, someone must have told you, or implied to you, that no meant
>yes, because otherwise why would you even question that no meant no?
>If, for example, you asked your parents if you could borrow the family
>car and they said no, would you expect to be able to take it anyway on
>the assumption that they really meant yes?
In some families, parents *always* start off saying “no.” They expect kids to respond with continued arguments, or pleading, or manipulative badgering, every time the kids really want something. Someone who is willing to persist beyond that first “no,” (or beyond the tenth) is demonstrating that he or she cares, showing the matter is important. Some families reinforce these values on purpose, because they really believe them. Other families just drift into a pattern where the parents say “no” as often as they can, because they’re afraid of losing control, and the kids push for as much as they can get, demonstrating that a fast-talker can often get “no” to “maybe” or “just a little” or “ok, but only this once.” This doesn’t start with high school kids asking for car keys. It develops from the time toddlers ask for cookies.
It’s extremely common for the heroes of kids books to start off being told they can’t or shouldn’t do something, then they go off and do it. They show young readers persistance, hope in the face of adversity, and various kinds of resourcefulness. It seems to implicitly work against no meaning no.
There’s a very common theme in stories for adults (romances, drama, romantic comedy) where a rejected suitor pursues his beloved, until she accepts him. In real life, that’s called “stalking,” and it’s not funny.
Some young people learn ethics very easily, so they think of it as obvious. Maybe they were just lucky in what their parents’ said, or in the examples they saw growing up. But ethics really are something that needs to be taught, and I think it’s perfectly appropriate to teach them in schools. (Or anywhere they can be taught to large numbers of people.) After all, schools teach that murder is wrong. It’s equally appropriate to teach that rape is wrong.
I have the same right that you have. If you can propagandize for your position in the public schools, then I can propagandize for mine.
Sorry, try again. My position is backed up by social science, biological science, and common sense. Yours is backed up by your religious beliefs. My tax dollars shouldn’t go towards teaching kids your religious beliefs.
Anonymous Viewer, you may want to take that article with a great deal of salt:
I shall leave the why as an exercise for the reader.
My position is backed up by social science, biological science, and common sense. Yours is backed up by your religious beliefs. My tax dollars shouldn’t go towards teaching kids your religious beliefs.
I reject the dichotomization. We are both citizens, and we have equal rights to advocate for our point of view. That yours are based on what you think of as “science” is immaterial. Science is not privileged under our Constitutional order.
Teaching kids my “religious beliefs” would entail teaching children the Catechism. I agree that would be an inappropriate use of state resources. The ethics that derive from those religious beliefs, however, are equally defensible, and I have every right to see that they are the ethics which are taught.
And I intend to do so. And you’re welcome not to like it, and to express your opposition in any way you like – none of which will move me one atom from my course.
Erika, I would not be so quick to dismiss the Heritage study. It’s based on very high-quality Federal data collection. What I found striking was the suicide attempt percentages reported. I would be willing to bet that the “suicide girls” are those who have been victimized by rape of other sexual assault. Which is just heart-breaking.
I wouldn’t have nearly the problem with the inclusion of abstinence if it wasn’t offered as hand-in-hand with marriage. That sort of teaching is absolutely not the business of the schools to teach. It’s downright offensive in fact.
Why does abstinence have to have any qualifiers? Abstinence until you end up deciding to have sex, then do it responsibly. For fucks sake, what is so hard about that, whether you’re a conservative or liberal?
I’m always fascinated as to why some (i.e. not Scandinavians) think that teen sex is such a horror. If you’re old enough to consent and find someone else (who is old enough to consent) that wants to have sex with you, what’s the big deal?
What I would like sex ed to be about more is how to find a good person to have sex with. With good I mean someone respectful, not-sexist, someone who likes you etc etc. And I’d like more discussion about how you know that you want to have sex. Are you aroused? Why? Does that mean you should find someone to have sex with, or should you have sex with yourself. How do you know if you’re hetero, homo, bi? What does love feel like? Attraction? Does he/she respect your consent/withdrawal of consent? How do you think with your head straight if you really, really want to have sex? How do you bring up the issue of condoms? Should you really have sex with someone who doesn’t want to use condoms? Will it really hurt for him if you don’t let him continue? No means no.
And these are things that should be discussed among women and men (girls and boys) all the time.
Robert & RonF: You are assuming facts not in evidence. I don’t expect public schools to teach all children according to my value system. What I object to, specifically, is what Kim states — that abstinence is the “only” way to go “until marriage.” This is a specifically religious precept. I have no problems with a school relaying accurate information about the benefits of not having sex, especially early sex. My school district lo these many years ago had a tentative sex ed course and I vividly recall the teacher’s response, winging it as she did, when asked about the importance of virginity, as paraphrased by me: virginity is not really a physical thing, it has to do with your emotions and your values, it is highly personal, and you should talk to your mother or others you trust to try to sort out those sorts of questions.
Saving it until marriage is a crude concept that, in my view, actually demeans women because it elevates the value of a hymen above just about any other attribute a woman might bring to a marital relaionship. Those women like Jennifer Roback Morse who go around post hoc arguing about the value of a lifestyle that they never embraced for themselves when they had the chance are purveyors of nothing but self-deception. They seem to think that had they “waited” they would be the same person, with the same career and the same choice of husband, they just would not have had sex. We can never say what would have been, — but to quote W.B. Yeats, “nothing can be sole or whole which has not been rent.” They are who they are because of not in spite of their experience however much they wish it were cleaner and more sanitized. And a far more likely outcome would have been earlier marriage with one of those earlier boyfriends, and take it from there — fewer years in school, possibly more children, almost certainly a greater likelihood of divorce. You only have to look at the Bible Belt to see what the alternative of no living together and early marriage gets for people.
So schools shouldn’t teach that physcial violence and bullying are unethical?
Are you attempting to put words in my mouth? I asked a question about what you thought the roles of the schools were in teaching ethics. Don’t presume what my answer might be; please supply your own.
RonF, Is that directed at me? I don’t know, there have been too many intervening posts. The last time I looked most forms of violence are actually illegal, so it seems rather quaint and unnecessary to teach them as being “unethical.”
“Bullying” is a harder problem, first, it has to be adequately defined. Since it is clearly a problem in school that causes a great deal of pain and anxiety and possibly even retaliatory violence, it is something that needs to be dealt with by schools. Rather than teaching it as being “unethical” I would favor decoding it, explaining it, and teaching kids how to stand up to bullies and also how to stand up for other kids who are being bullied. Kids who are bullies are often just as unhappy as those they bully and such teaching might actually help them adopt more constructive behavior as well. I don’t think it’s enough to tell everyone that bullying is unethical. I don’t think that the right framework, or that it will help the situation much.
Why does abstinence have to have any qualifiers? Abstinence until you end up deciding to have sex, then do it responsibly. For fucks sake, what is so hard about that, whether you’re a conservative or liberal?
Nothing’s hard about that. At least, not the concept. The execution seems to be a bit harder ….
“Abstinence until you end up deciding to have sex” is kind of a non-sequitir. Abstinence doesn’t refer to denying external influences, to resisting external pressures to do something you don’t want to do. Abstinence means self-denial – restraining oneself from taking an action because there are good external reasons not to do it that are more important than your desire to do so.
As far as “then do it responsibly” goes, that’s the point that we are all foundering on. Is it responsible to have sex with someone that you have no long-term emotional bond with? Is it responsible to have sex with someone heedless of the chance of pregnancy – or accepting the possibility of or even deliberately choosing to be a single parent? Is it responsible to have sex if there is a likelihood that you will have to consume public resources to support the consequences (STD, children, etc.)? Is it responsible to have sex before you are married?
Different people have different answers to those questions. They may be based on your interpretation of a moral code (religious-based or not). They may be based on your interpretation of various scientific studies. They’re probably based on a combination of both. For example, the concept of “don’t have sex until you are married” is in accordance with various religious codes. But it also is in accordance with the idea that a) sex often leads to children, and 2) married couples provide a better environment for childraising than unmarried couples or single parents. There’s plenty of individual exceptions to that, of course. But overall it’s a reasonable position.
And let’s not forget that religions didn’t come about in a vacumn. Their tenets come from practical roots. In a day and age when sex between two healthy people would have excellent odds of conception and there were few practical means of birth control, marriage meant that a child would have the maximum number of people to provide for it and ensure its survival (and that of the group). While modern technology can supercede the practical needs of some religious tenets from a scientific view (pork is now generally quite safe to eat), it’s an open question whether society and humankind has changed in such a fashion as to justify discarding others (don’t have sex until you’re married) from a moral view. Just because something is technically safe to do doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
No, barbara, I’m referring to a post in which Abyss2hope responded to one of my earlier posts. Sorry for the confusion.
brynn said to me:
“Sex education is not equivalent to teaching sexual ethics. That’s a specious argument.”
The point of this law was to add a particular ethical viewpoint to the required sex ed curriculum in Wisconsin. It’s that addition that I refer to, not the whole topic of sex ed to begin with. I’m making the presumption that prior to this, Wisconsin’s sex ed curriculum was values-free, more of a “here’s how it works” presentation, and that this is the first time that any content was added regarding when or why to have sex. On that basis, I asked my question – is the objection to this law based on the fact that the schools are now being required to teach sexual ethics overall, or is the objection based on the particular sexual ethics that are being required to be taught?
Lanoire said:
Sorry, try again. My position is backed up by social science, biological science, and common sense. Yours is backed up by your religious beliefs.
I reject the dicotomization that such religious beliefs and social and biological sciences and common sense are not compatible.
My tax dollars shouldn’t go towards teaching kids your religious beliefs.
But it’s entirely legitimate to spend tax dollars on teaching a given concept that is in accord with religious beliefs as long as the concept itself is not a religious one.
AV: The Heritage Foundation study, if it is correct, demonstrates a correlation between teenage sex and depression. But correlation is not causation. Would the teenagers studied not be depressed if they weren’t having sex? Very unlikely. More likely they are having sex as a way of self-medicating against the depression: sex feels good and makes you feel good about yourself–if only for a few minutes. Later, especially if they are told that sex is evil, they may feel worse about themselves, of course. In any case, any study of teenage sex in the US is hopelessly compromised by confounding factors, such as the negative value people place on sexual contact in the teens. If you got a similar result studying sexual activity versus depression in Scandinavia I’d be more impressed, although the causation arrow would still be questionable.
Incidently, I have no problem with people choosing abstinence, if it is made as a real choice rather than seen as the only acceptable option. I’ve been abstinent for long periods of my adult life and it didn’t seem to do me any harm. Everyone should probably be abstinent and out of any relationship for at least 6 months at some point in their adult lives just to prove to themselves that they won’t die or be utterly miserable if they don’t have sex and/or a boy/girlfriend. But early, thoughtless marriage just because one wants to have acceptable sex and fancies oneself in love with the first person one is attracted to is utter poison. Much better to have meaningless sex with strangers than to be tied for life to someone that you don’t respect and love.
Barbara said:
that abstinence is the “only” way to go “until marriage.” This is a specifically religious precept.
I don’t accept this statement. There’s no dispute that many religious hold this. But others don’t. And there are non-religious reasons that would support that this is a good idea. Just because something is espoused by various religions doesn’t mean that any assertion of that idea is an assertion of religion or religious belief.
And a far more likely outcome would have been earlier marriage with one of those earlier boyfriends, and take it from there … fewer years in school, possibly more children, almost certainly a greater likelihood of divorce. You only have to look at the Bible Belt to see what the alternative of no living together and early marriage gets for people.
What statistics can you quote about marriage in the Bible Belt vs. marriage in other places in the country to support this?
Also, I am wondering; most of the things you refer to in this are presumably negative, such as fewer years in school, greater likelihood of divorce. I’m going to tread carefully here, but in what context did you think that a likely outcome of more children was worth mentioning?
Adrian: I thought about that after I posted. There’s a saying “no is just their first negotiating position”. You’re right that the attitude that no doesn’t necessarily mean no is common in US culture. However, in non-sexual situations, you’re expected to get at least a nominal yes before proceeding. It may be that eventually the toddler will get the cookie, but the rules demand that he or she wait for the yes supposedly behind the no to appear before eating it.
Further complicating the problem, women are taught from a young age that they must please others. So saying no when someone so clearly wants you to say yes can be difficult. This can be a problem in non-sexual situations as well: it is hard to say no when someone leans on you for an outrageous favor, for example.
Ron F, to your last question, just that her life would have been materially different in many ways, not that having fewer children is invariably good.
The statistics on divorce are pretty clear. The likelihood of divorce is closely correlated with age at marriage — the higher age upon first marriage, the less likelihood that one will get divorced. It is also closely correlated with educational attainment — those who have completed college are far less likely to get divorced.
States with the highest rates of divorce are in the South, including Oklahoma and Arkansas and they reflect both of these trends, younger average age at first marriage and lower educational attainment.
Now, there are some potential lurking variables in all of this. I honestly don’t know whether the above controls for income, but I am pretty sure it does, to the extent it can be, anyway. Perhaps those who marry later or have graduated from college don’t have to divorce their first “spouse” because he or she isn’t a spouse at all but a live in (this is almost certainly the case). But it’s also just possible that waiting for marriage until you are more mature and have established a career/life makes your marriage more stable.
I can’t prove that putting so much emphasis on abstinence would cause people to marry earlier, but I do know that those who put marriage off are far more likely to have sexual experience outside of marriage, and not to see it as a big deal. Which is not the same thing as not being responsible or not having any emotional bond vis a vis one’s sexual partners. It’s just a way of saying that there are lots of people (most people) who do not live their lives on the “all or nothing 0%/100%” plan for sex and marriage, with nothing in between, and further, that statistics tend to show that it is these sorts of people who appear to have more stable marriages under current economic and social conditions.
I just don’t think it’s fair to teach teenagers without acknowledging any of this evidence.
Sex ed is all about information. Abstinnence education tends to be about non-information, or mis-information. If you have read that report about the bogus (and very sexist) data circulated by federally funded abstinence only programs, then you have good cause to be very suspicious of reasonable sounding abstinence advocates.
Can anyone help me out remembering the name of that report on Fed Funded Abstinence ed? Young posters like Anonymous Viewer need to read it, or their young minds will be stunted by articles that claim sex makes young women go crazy.
Sometimes I think that being a lesbian is like being in the 12th or 13th dimension, or something.
I’m happy to say that I’m in a long-term, committed, loving relationship with a woman, and we share many a moment of physical contact which culminate in mutual orgasms. Yet, strangely enough, according to some of the more parochial males around these parts, I’m abstinate too! Whee. No penis = no sex, right? I mean, if sex is the mythical joining of the penis and the coochie, under the gently woven canopy of committment, then I’m downright celibate.
Oh, yeah. That celibate word. Do you suppose when they are teaching young women and young men about abstinence, they’re also telling them of the evils of masturbation? I mean, you’re not really abstaining if your jacking off to your Daddy’s porn, are you? Or is sex *really* all about the comingling of penis and coochie? Or are young boys still tactily encouraged to masturbate? Is the objectification of women taught as an equal evil and expressly a non-committment to the women/girls in men/boy’s lives? Can you ever really consider yourself committed to your wife if you’ve ever, even just once, jacked-off over a nudie photo?
Or is that just plain *silly*?
I completely agree with Catarina, so much that I’m going to repeat what she said:
Schools shouldn’t teach sex ed. They should discuss it. Give kids all the facts about anatomy, reproduction, STDs, the history of and controversies surrounding sexual relationships. Include “Some people believe it’s physically and psychologically healthier to refrain from having sex until marriage, and here’s why they think that way” as well as “Some people believe that sex is an enjoyable and morally-neutral activity that should be available to everyone, and here’s why they think that way.”
Most importantly, let kids themselves talk and ask questions. And direct them to resources like this blog post, where they can get all sorts of information from a variety of different viewpoints. I can’t see how anyone could reasonably oppose such an approach.
But is it entirely legitimate to teach a concept that is not a religious one when it is not in accordance with religious beliefs? I see little problem with teachers saying that people who don’t have sex don’t get pregnant. Similarly, I see no problem with teachers saying that any account of a virgin birth is a myth.
But what about rape and incest?
Religious beliefs are not an academic proposition. They are a belief set. It’s fine for you to have your beliefs, teach them to your kids, and even for them to be taught in a school providing it isn’t a public one that is attempting to teach them to my kids too.
Both Matt and I had sex prior to marriage. We married in our early 30’s. When I say had sex, I mean with people other than each other – multiple people other than each other. Neither of us feel remorse or morally wrong for having done so. We both in fact feel that those experiences are part of the foundations of what made us the people we are today that makes us good mates for one another. As Jake said earlier, it’s different for everyone. What works for you and your spouse may not work for me and mine. That said, this is reality.
So what to do? Again, why must abstinence have a qualifier? Abstinence is simply choosing to not have sex, there is no non-sequedor in not creating an ‘end date’ to the abstinence that is something outside of the persons decision making process. Abstinence should end when a person decides that they are ready and willing to have sex and have a consenting partner that feels the same way.
And Barb was exactly right about the religious notions of marriage and how extremely objectifying and patronizing they are to women over men. Our virginity doesn’t increase or decrease our value as people, and teaching children the Christian model of sex ed says it does.
Moreover, given that marriage between two women in the US is only legal in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at this time, by the logic of abstinence until marriage you should never have sex!
Although, does lesbian sex count by the definition of the proponents of abstinence? Does masturbation? Q grrl, you raise some excellent points in your post.
My situation as a non-op female-to-male transsexual is also interesting. First, marriage to a woman is not a foolproof legal option. For whereas I can produce male id and marry, my spouse or her family could easily challenge the legality, and along with it child custody, inheritance, etc., if they chose to, say, in the case of divorce, death or incapacitation. And as for sex, I’ve always found it amusing to speculate: would homophobes who criticize queers on the basis of “the body parts don’t fit” then approve of me pairing up (as I have before) with a queer guy?
RonF said:
If your religious beliefs are not compatible with social science, i.e. the real world, then they have no place becoming law. I don’t care if you fervently believe the world is a better place if everyone abstained until marriage. Everyone who lives in a free country, including teenagers, have the right to receive clear, real-world information, not pseudo-religious babble. You have the right to pull your kids out of public school if you don’t approve of what’s being taught, or you can even create a religious commune like they have in many places, but muddling up the information by creating these kinds of moral laws is more in line with theocracy than democracy.
Why hide from real-world, empirical information? The Heritage Foundation study doesn’t help resolve this. I’m sure you won’t like the source of this, but check the citations at the bottom: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/teensexualhealth/fact-teen-pregnancy.xml
Science is not a belief system with the moral equivalence of religious beliefs, it is the collected observations of humankind since the beginning of writing and communication. Big difference there. There’s no reason why facts and information should be kept from anyone when it will improve the lives of the majority of people out there. Seat belts, helmets, warning labels, these are the same kinds of things without the moral undertow, and nobody has a problem with those.
The issue isn’t an end date, it’s an end condition. It may be “Until you can do so responsibly”. And while some people think that such a condition means that you are emotionally mature, etc., others think that it includes marrige.
The “Christian model of sex ed”? There are plenty of religions other than Christianity that teach abstinence until marriage.
gwerak, I read the reference. I’m afraid that I don’t see the conflict between that article and the law that the Governor of Wisconsin signed. The article condemned abstinence-only sex ed. I condemn it as well, and that’s not what the law cited above requires.
“refraining from sex before marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases” That’s true, but it’s also true that refraining from sex AFTER marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases too. I wonder who will be the first sex ed teacher to mention that.
Holding the philosophical position is pretty much cost-free, says robert.
Actually, holding philosophical positions without commitment is morally lax, and leads to informationally transmitted diseases! Okay, that was a cheap snark: really, I just want to point all present to this brilliant article by bradhicks, regarding the difference between the baseline of liberal thought and the baseline of conservative thought. It’s been sticking in my mind for a year now. Excerpt: “There are people who just plain assume that no matter how high or low you set your moral standards, you will occasionally fall short of them. . . . What they can’t imagine is that some other people, like me, were raised by a different rule altogether. . . . a set of moral values are a promise we make to the world. No excuse will be offered, or accepted, for breaking such a promise. No, when I tell you what my moral values are, you can pretty well count on my keeping them.”
I agree with Dianne about the silly correlational study. Correlational studies are cheap, and you can say anything you like with them. It is possible that the young girls were using sex as a means of making themselves a little happier. It is also quite possible that non-sexually-active kids had not hit a point of puberty where brain chemistry changes, making them more prone to depression. About 30% of adults have depression at some point and adolescence is notoriously one of those vulnerable points.
I’m actually a bit shocked that this bill would get so much attention. Encouraging immature individuals, who are increasingly getting diseases, abortions or bringing children into an unstable financial and emotional situation, to consider waiting doesn’t seem blasphemous to me at all. I have always been shocked at how something so beneficial to society could cause such controversy. It is the preferred way. You know this if you have children(boys or girls). In my life most of the people I know have emotional scars from relationships which became sexual. There are a lot fewer connected to nonsexual relationships. If the kids aren’t going to listen, then they are also presented with options for responsible sex. It’s not like they are taking the option away. Personally, I’m going to teach my children that abstinence is the way to go. I don’t know anyone who regretted that choice. I know many who regretted even “safe” sex.